A Convenient Marriage

A Convenient Marriage
Maggie Cox

Businesswoman Sabrina Kendricks was swept off her feet by millionaire Argentinean Javier D’Alessandro. . . and on their third date he asked her to marry him!But this was no whirlwind romance–Javier needed a British wife to adopt his orphaned niece. Sabrina knew it was only a convenient arrangement–even though the passion that burned in Javier's eyes suggested they could have so much more. . . .

Sabrina had heard of being stripped naked by a man’s eyes, but her husband was way ahead.

He was shamelessly making love to her with that slumberous dark gaze of his, heating her blood with a potent mixture of fire and pure masculine chemistry, making her skin prickle with the sensation of being physically touched in the most intimately erotic way. Inside her robe her nipples peaked, the intense aching throb bordering on pain. Moisture spread between the juncture of her thighs as her knees started to shake.

“You should go.” Finding her voice, she silently acknowledged it had no real conviction. How could it when she craved him like parched land needed rain?

“We never kissed when we exchanged vows.”

The heat they were engendering between them turned up the temperature in the room another notch.

“I would very much like to remedy that, Sabrina.”

For several years Maggie Cox was a reluctant secretary who dreamed of becoming a published author. She can’t remember a time when she didn’t have her head in a book or wasn’t busy filling exercise books with stories. When she was ten years old, her favorite English teacher told her, “If you don’t become a writer I’ll eat my hat!” But it was only after marrying the love of her life that she finally became convinced she might be able to achieve her dream. Now a self-confessed champion of dreamers everywhere, she urges everyone with a dream to go for it and never give up. Also a busy full-time mom, who tries constantly not to be so busy, in what she laughingly calls her spare time she loves to watch good drama or romantic movies, and eat chocolate!

Maggie Cox

A CONVENIENT MARRIAGE

TORONTO • NEW YORK • LONDON

AMSTERDAM • PARIS • SYDNEY • HAMBURG

STOCKHOLM • ATHENS • TOKYO • MILAN • MADRID

PRAGUE • WARSAW • BUDAPEST • AUCKLAND

To Ruth and Graham—I feel so blessed to

know you both—and Jean, who loved to

read romance. I miss you still

CONTENTS

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER ONE

‘FAT lot of good you did me!’ Disparagingly, Sabrina Kendricks glared at herself in the tailored burgundy suit she’d splashed a couple of hundred pounds she couldn’t afford on, and knew she’d have to be clean out of every piece of clothing she possessed before she could bring herself to ever wear it again. Dressing to impress had sadly failed to have the desired effect on Richard Weedy—the pompous, halitosis-afflicted excuse for a bank manager whom she had met less than an hour ago. Weedy of stature and weedy by nature as far as Sabrina’s assessment was concerned. Spineless, in fact.

‘You’re not a good risk, Miss Kendricks,’ he’d whined. Not a good risk? She’d run East-West Travel for fifteen years now, so what was he talking about? What did he want—a cast-iron guarantee? Business was all about taking risks, surely? Good job she didn’t have a cat because right now she’d kick it.

Instead, she padded into the kitchen in her stockinged feet and peered hopefully into what she already knew was an empty fridge. Empty because she hadn’t had time to shop, and because food seemed to be low down on her list of priorities when she was in dire need of some proper investment to bring her small company in line with twenty-first-century technology. The mere thought of the task that lay ahead haunted her into the early hours. She wasn’t going to let the business she’d worked so hard to establish get swallowed up by the big boys who were currently monopolising the travel industry.

Thinking back on her recent interview, she wondered if she’d come across as too hopeful or just simply desperate? She made a face at the bereft shelves, slammed the door shut and went across to the sink to pour herself a glass of water instead. She thought she’d pitched it just right, but maybe her smile had been too forced? Maybe the way she’d pinned back her hair had been too severe? Maybe Moroccan-red lipstick had come across as somehow intimidating? And maybe Richard Weedy just had a thing about pushy career-woman types, as her mother referred to women who didn’t permanently wander round the house with a pinny on and a duster in their hands.

Thinking about her mother gave Sabrina indigestion and made her realise that not a morsel of food had passed her lips since six-thirty yesterday evening. It was now just after eleven-thirty in the morning and she was beginning to feel quite nauseous. Maybe it was time to change her bank? Could she do that? One thing was certain, no pinch-faced, patronising, woman-resenting bank manager was going to stop her from making East-West Travel the unalloyed success she knew it could be. She’d sell every pair of shoes she owned and go barefoot before she let that happen.

‘Don’t go, Uncle Javier! Please don’t go!’ The slender eleven-year-old with the liquid brown eyes and plaited black hair held on tight to her tall, broad-shouldered uncle, her tenacious grip surprisingly powerful for a child so slight, the plea in her voice and the pain in her expression cutting Javier’s heart in two. Above the child’s head, his own dark gaze sought out her father, and, looking back at him, Michael Calder’s face was nothing less than haunted.

‘Hush, Angelina, hush, my angel,’ Javier crooned against his niece’s hair. ‘I was only going to make a phone call to cancel my meeting. I will stay with you as long as you want me to, if that is all right with your father?’

Michael’s silent nod was curt but hugely relieved. Both father and daughter were facing a situation that was possibly going to tear the little family apart, and Javier shared doubly in their turmoil because Angelina’s mother had been his beloved sister Dorothea, who’d died eight years ago when Angelina was only three. Now the child was facing the possible death of her father. How cruel was that? Just yesterday Michael Calder had been diagnosed with a particularly devastating form of cancer and his prognosis was not good. Tomorrow he would go into hospital for some radical treatment and only God knew how long he would be staying in…maybe he would never come out again. Javier bit back the black thought and concentrated on the weeping child instead. Around her, his embrace tightened. Michael should not have to bear this burden alone. Javier vowed he would do everything in his power to ease their suffering. He would try and bring some stability to Angelina’s young life when all around her were shifting sands, as well as being a good friend and support to her father. But first he had to find a way of staying in the UK permanently because as an Argentine national he would need permission to reside.

‘I’ll get Rosie to make you up a bed.’ Unable to bear the sight of his daughter’s distress any longer, Michael went in search of their friendly Welsh nanny, clearly thankful for the distraction.

‘Let us go and find a video to watch together, hmm?’ Holding his niece slightly apart so that he could furnish her with a smile, Javier wiped her tears away then took her gently by the hand into the family’s sumptuously furnished living-room.

He woke up to rain. It was pelting his bedroom window with a vengeance, like a hundred small boys firing missiles from catapults. But it wasn’t the sight of grey skies and rain that made Javier’s heart feel heavy. Angelina had cried herself to sleep. At eleven years of age, she already knew what losing a parent meant. Her uncle had stayed with her long into the night just listening to her breathing, praying with everything he had in him for God to send her peaceful dreams—dreams that weren’t possessed with darkly terrifying images of grief and loss. He had left Michael in the living-room nursing a thick glass of single malt whisky—too mentally shattered himself to suggest his brother-in-law should lay off the drink, considering the circumstances. They couldn’t go on like this. Something was going to break if they didn’t find a solution soon…

The smooth tanned lines on his forehead puckering into a scowl, Javier got swiftly out of bed and headed for the bathroom. Once he’d showered and dressed, he would have a cup of Rosie’s exquisitely made coffee, then go and rouse Michael with a cup. The man would have one hell of a hangover, that was certain, but then wasn’t he entitled? How would he feel if he were facing such a bleak future? Scowling again as the family’s problems seemed to mount in his head, Javier turned the shower dial to hot then quickly stripped off his clothes.

‘OK, so he turned you down, it’s not the end of the world.’

Only her sister could come out with such a throwaway remark in the midst of her sibling’s disappointment and worry, Sabrina reflected in exasperation as she got down on her knees to play ‘peek-a-boo’ with the baby. Sometimes she wondered if motherhood had somehow blunted Ellie’s perception of how it really was out there in the working world. Once a high-flyer herself, now mother to three lively children under the age of five, Ellie seemed to wrap every problem in a soft-focus cloud of pink, and her adoring husband Phil did nothing to disillusion her.

‘Maybe not to you.’ Sabrina tickled baby Tallulah under the chin then reached for a baby-wipe to clean the drool off her fingers. ‘But it’s my livelihood we’re talking about here. If I don’t get the investment I need then I’m never going to be able to bring the business up-to-date. It will just be a matter of time before we have to fold. And what about Jill and Robbie? They’ll be unemployed. Great thanks that would be after all their years of service!’

Ellie stopped her ritual picking up after the two toddlers to shake her head at Sabrina.

‘I can’t see the fascination myself. It’s a dog-eat-dog world out there, Sabrina. Haven’t you had enough of the treadmill after fifteen years? You’re what now, thirty-seven? Soon you’ll be too old to have children, then what? Cold comfort your business is going to be when you have nothing but an empty flat to come home to.’

‘You’re beginning to sound just like Mum.’ Picking up Tallulah, Sabrina nuzzled her affectionately behind her ear, the scent of talcum powder and six-month-old baby giving her heart an unexpected squeeze.